en the enemy will be before the gates of Paris in
eight days. Alas!' he added, 'have I accustomed them to such great
victories that they knew not how to bear one day's misfortune? What will
become of poor France? I have done all I could for her!' He then heaved
a deep sigh. Somebody asked to speak to him, and I left him, with a
direction to come back at a later hour.

"I passed the day in seeking information among all my friends and
acquaintances. I found in all of them either the greatest dejection or
an extravagant joy, which they disguised by feigned alarm and pity for
myself, which I repulsed with great indignation. Nothing favourable was
to be expected from the Chamber of Representatives. They all said they
wished for liberty, but, between two enemies who appeared ready to
destroy it, they preferred the foreigners, the friends of the Bourbons,
to Napoleon, who might still have prolonged the struggle, but that he
alone would not find means to save them and erect the edifice of liberty.
The Chamber of Peers presented a much sadder spectacle. Except the
intrepid Thibaudeau, who till, the last moment expressed himself with
admirable energy against the Bourbons, almost all the others thought of
nothing else but getting out of the dilemma with the least loss they
could. Some took no pains to hide their wish of bending again under the
Bourbon yoke."

On the evening of Napoleon's return to Paris he sent for Benjamin
Constant to come to him at the Elysee about seven o'clock. The Chambers
had decreed their permanence, and proposals for abdication had reached
the Emperor. He was serious but calm. In reply to some words on the
disaster of Waterloo he said, "The question no longer concerns me, but
France. They wish me to abdicate. Have they calculated upon the
inevitable consequences of this abdication? It is round me, round my
name, that the army rallies: to separate me from it is to disband it.
If I abdicate to-day, in two days' time you will no longer have an army.
These poor fellows do not understand all your subtleties. Is it believed
that axioms in metaphysics, declarations of right, harangues from the
tribune, will put a stop to the disbanding of an army? To reject me when
I landed at Cannes I can conceive possible; to abandon me now is what I
do not understand. It is not when the enemy is at twenty-five leagues'
distance that any Government can be overturned with impunity. Does any
one imagine that the Foreign Powers w